Two weeks ago I started work at Amazon Web Services. AWS is Amazon's cloud computing platform, which provides processing power to individuals and organizations that don't want to maintain their own server fleets. I'll be working on Amazon Silk, which is the browser for the Kindle Fire, Amazon's tablet device.

That Silk is a part of AWS is both unusual and exciting. Traditionally, the browser would simply be an application on the device. Silk is what we call a split-architecture browser. This means that some of the processing occurs on the device, and some of the processing occurs on the cloud — in this case, AWS. Offloading some of that processing to the cloud, taking advantage of intelligent caching and image optimization, can do a lot to increase battery life, reduce data consumption, and improve performance when browsing the web.

I have a lot to learn. Not only will I be working with new technology, doing Android development and an unprecedented (for me) amount of concurrent programming, but I will also have to learn the Amazon ecosystem of software, libraries, and tools.

Really, it's just what I needed at this stage in my career. I've experienced a number of environments: educational, during my time at college; self-taught, from all the projects I've done on my own; and startup, from my work at Zebigo. Now I'll dive into corporate, and see where it takes me.